Kids ages 9 and older are invited to meet on the fourth Wednesdays of the month (unless otherwise noted) after school from 3:30-4:15. Each meeting includes a game, craft, or activity, and usually includes a snack (please let us know if your child has allergies). Please join us if you have read the book or are interested in joining for future meetings.
This month’s Brentwood Bookworms selection will be The Poet Slave of Cuba by Margarita Engle:
Engle (Skywriting, for adults) achieves an impressive synergy between poetry and biography as she illuminates the tortured life of the 19th-century Cuban poet. Born a slave, Juan is kept like “a poodle, her pet/ with my curly dark hair/ and small child’s brown skin,” by his “godmother” and owner, Beatriz. She grants his birth parents manumission (for a price), while refusing to free Juan until her own death. Juan shows talent for memorization, and recites literature for Beatriz’s amusement. Despite his mother’s payment, Juan is transferred, at Beatriz’s death, to another owner, the Marquesa de Prado Ameno, who punishes Juan cruelly. There he also secretly learns to read and write—posing a threat to the Marquesa and the social order. Engle’s compelling poems shift in viewpoint among seven people, and the technique works beautifully: readers thus draw their own conclusions from Juan, his desperate parents, brutal owners, the Marquesa’s sympathetic son and the conflicted Overseer. Juan’s poems articulate both his enduring pain and dream of release (“I sit tied and gagged./ She is there, behind the curtain./ …/ She can’t hear the stories I tell myself in secret”), while recurring bird imagery signifies elusive freedom. Quall’s (The Baby on the Way ) expressionistic half-tone illustrations extend Engle’s exploration of race as a cornerstone of the social caste in Spanish colonial Cuba. (Juan and his family are dark-skinned; the women who own him use a powder of crushed eggshells and rice to lighten their complexion.) An author’s note and excerpts from Manzano’s own poetry round out this sophisticated volume. Ages 10-up. (Apr.) –Staff (Reviewed April 17, 2006) (Publishers Weekly, vol 253, issue 16, p190)
Via NoveList Plus.
Get some help on your homework from our friendly and knowledgeable tutors at the Ferguson Public Library! They can help kids from kindergarten on up. No registration required!
Dogs make the best listeners! Stop by the library to read your favorite book to dogs from Support Dogs, Inc. Event is free and open to children and families.
Join us at the Maplewood Public Library for this fun group. Just bring your needles, your yarn, and you can craft with others who love crafting. This is not instructional but while you are with fellow crafters, you can help each other.
You are invited to a special storytime with Dr. Sheri Anderson, Assistant Professor of Spanish at St. Louis University! No matter whether Spanish is your first language or if you’ve never spoken a word of it, families with children up to age 7 are welcome to participate in this immersive experience where you’ll learn Spanish words, culture within Spanish-speaking communities, and ways to incorporate the Spanish language into your daily life.
Get some help on your homework from our friendly and knowledgeable tutors at the Ferguson Public Library! They can help kids from kindergarten on up. No registration required!
